unlearned 

I am the poem that graces a page/ the spoken word that pontificates on an open mic stage/ I am the verse that extends like the wingspan of an ego/ soaring through the door to a metaphor/ I am similar to prose but different than a sonnet/ I am sultry like a simile /                        or southern belle strolling down a country road with an umbrella and yellow bonnet.

I am summertime and lemonade breezes / my tongue as cool as ice/ I am the lyric wrapped in a prayer / the poetic prose poised on bended knee / palms pressed / like a proverb / I am the spoken and the heard / the yellow brick road / the pathway to purpose/power

I am found if you search for me / deep in the crevice of despair / where olive oil burns / late in the midnight hour

I am the unlearned

Comrades of …..

A defibrillator/pen laptop/cell phone

resuscitate the fingertips of a writer

barely breathing/dehydrated by a 9 to 5

Adjectives and metaphors

fighting for their lives on midnight pages

b’cuz

The only thing worth losing sleep over is

poetry and prose/dialogue and loglines

b’cuz

Obituaries are filled with unfinished sentences

and action verbs on pause

and dreams of mold /buried in hedges

mowed by the gardeners of piety

the good folk of society/the crabs in the barrel

the white picket fence safe sailors

who anchor their security in 401k annuities

none of them bold/living like chrome

imposters/fake gold  coffins and mortgaged homes

squeezing the life out of those

with autobiographies untold

with not a single book sold

b’cuz

dreams die alive with open eyes

strangled by the comrades of compromise

(image by Juliette Clovis)

Buried / Inside these red walls striped with black and white pages and a chattering keypad recording an imaginative life / crammed between slug lines, dialogue and thirty-second pitches

Charmed / by the simplicity of a lazy Saturday with friends by the pool shooting hoops / double dosing on prayer and love / pouring from cups of hope and life everlasting / beyond stage four cancer threatening to shatter our fairytale

Zooted / from infused cranberry muffins and chai tea and the never-ending yellow brick road / wondering if the tin man got high / if Dorothy was really a meth head or if the lion was just gay

Chock-full / of deferred hope and preferred depression / filled to the brim with overnight success Oscar rehearsal speeches / of friends with benefits / of conflict diamond shards peppered into my shampoo to make me feel alive

this room inside my head is where zebras are unleashed and run wild / where I rock/paper/scissors with Quentin Tarantino / where I play hopscotch with the spirit of Maya Angelou/ where I sing the blues with Billie Holiday / write prose with Miles  / downward dog pose with Moses

this room must be purgatory

hey God, leave me be / my wings work just fine

 

 

 

  burn/burn

Go ahead
reach deep inside the pocket of
my sinful desire
the place where hope is buried
a damp and deserted place
sheltered from the light of day

Oh, come hither you ominous cloud
resurrect the life inside these stale bones
where the marrow of brokered
dreams lay inhaling and exhaling
coughing up phlegm
fighting for the right to die respectably
in a low rent apartment
with bed bugs/ramen noodles/corn bread
purchased with stripper/showgirl salary
sweaty palms and hot flesh
on cold linoleum floors
breaking bread with strangers

Go ahead
come on in, take a number
beggars eat here for free with
promises baked in concrete ovens
where a brown suede coffin engulfs
my body in flames

Go on mister man
play your song/do your dance
burn/burn this midnight away
barter my beauty for the ashes of geishas

   american arrogance

We are conditioned, oppressed, depressed, and accessed

Excused, confused, and intrusive

We are proud, rude, and cruel/lewd even

We choose capitalism as a spiritual tool

We are corporate, ignorant, combative, consumers

Sometimes humorous

We are intimidators and interrogators

We are litigious and imperialists

We exploit our young and discard our old

We convince ourselves we are just

Just because we are Americans/but

We are leaders, teachers, students, and philosophers

We are believers, volunteers, dreamers, and achievers

We are mathematicians, astronauts, and iconoclasts

We are Americans/artists and activists

We are alive and free, walking lightly

We are the created imitating the creator

We are survivors lost and slaves paid for with a cost

We are abusers and users mistrusted for

corruption and consumption

Who can believe an American?

Will repentance reap grief from decadent soil?

Who is to blame for a tarnished name?

Only an American knows which side the green grass grows

 

     tap the Valley

then wonder the Wilderness

dig the Bones/speak the Life/find the Fire

plant the Word/watch the Rain/render the Heart

open the Gates /collect the Stones/trouble the Water

tap the Valley/wonder the Wilderness

prophesy the Promise/hack the Rainbow

good the Glory/write the Story/wake the Mountain

drink the Fountain /sift the Wheat/break the Bread

lead the Sheep/sing the Song/right the Wrong

down come the Walls/listen for the Call

fight the Fight/lift the Veil/live to Tell

walk the Talk/shine the Light/learn the Lesson

God can do anything but fail/rapture the Blessing

Preacher Pimp Imposter Scholar Agnostic Atheist Callin’ on God

 

A poet met a pimp who claimed he was a preacher

A teacher of sorts kinda sort of but not really

He courted her with strings, material things

White Zinfandel, African violets

And trivial trinkets.

 

They graduated from the University

The streets of hard knocks and poverty

She quoted scriptures while he noted nothing

Callin’ on God in unison a muted tone

Static in his phone he spoke of fairytales

Sold fruit cocktail for personal gain

Changed his name to pursue fame

The poet was perplexed and amused

Intrigued by the diabolical philosophy

She wrote in prose what was unspoken

She listened and heard what was broken

She prayed in silence for a preacher pimp

Imposter scholar agnostic atheist callin’

For a savior.

 

His behavior was complex

His heart almost clean

His mind not quite renewed

An eagle with a pigeon’s position

His tongue spoke deceit

His soul missing a spirit receipt

Incomplete.

 

Captivated by his light although dim

The poet found a friend in him

Although he slay her a thousand times

She penned this poem with rhyme and reason

Because for every fool there is a season

 

Never judge a pimp by his collar

Never assume a poet to be a scholar.

 

  House of Geisha/for Michael

An invitation to the drifters

Waifs and strays / gay runaways

Come into this house

A temple for rites or wrongs

Passion for safe passage

Let burdens exhale in this sinner’s retreat

A haven of heaven where judgment is vice

The world deemed you shameless

some crucified / twice

Scoured your souls clean / baptized the Jesus out of you

Nigger, dyke, faggot, slut, whore, vixen, victim, hopeless, homeless, insane, guilty

Nameless / blameless / obscene

The burlesque dancers, the striptease heathens, the fools of finesse

The charmers, the rebels, the renegades / the gnomes who write poems

Bad apple seeds / sweet tarts / black hearts

We God’s gang

Come into this house / find beauty for ashes

Claim your fame

  red ink

Still water rushes through veins

Cold wars are raging / this battlefield worn

Soldiers have died / mothers crying

This purple heart torn / black steel sleeves

Broken civilities / the right to be human

Camouflaged by sunburn

 

I am a goddess with no God

Holiness haunts me / tormenting my religion

Hatred taunts me / truth lies in my marrow

 

I am fornicating with freedom / with legions of demons

They tricked me with liberty /  justice for all

I believed the hype / trusted the cheating chase

The police are killing my people

 

I am alone with my pen / stripped down to red ink

Raw

  @jesse

a system built to divide and impoverish and destroy us cannot stand if we do …

its basic mathematics, the more we learn about who we are and how we got here the more we will mobilize….

this is for also the black women in particular who have spent their lifetimes dedicated to nurturing everyone before themselves

we can and will do better for you…now

what we been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people

every day

so what’s gonna happen is that we are gonna have equal rights and justice in our own country or we will restructure their function….

and ours…now

yesterday would have been young Tamir Rice’s 14th birthday….

so I don’t wanna hear about anymore how far we’ve come when paid public servants can pull a drive by on a 12-year-old playing alone in a park in broad daylight, killing him on television and then going home to make a sandwich…

tell Rekia Boyd how it’s so much better to live in 2012 than 1612 or 1712, tell that to Eric Garner, tell that to Sandra Bland, tell that to Darrian Hunt…

all of us getting money, that alone isn’t gonna stop this

dedicating our lives to get money just to give it right back for someone’s brand on our body when we spent centuries praying with brands on our bodies, and now we pray to get paid for brands on our bodies

there has been no war that we have not fought and died on the front lines of, there’s been no job that we haven’t done, there’s no tax that they haven’t levied against us and we’ve paid all of them

but freedom is somehow conditional here

“you’re free….” they keep telling us

“but she would have been alive if she hadn’t acted so free..”

freedom is always coming in the hereafter but the hereafter is a hustle

we want it now!

the burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander

that’s not our job, stop with all that

if you have a critique for our resistance then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression

if you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do….

sit down!

we’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness

uses and abuses us, burying black people out of site and out of mind

while extracting our culture, our dollars, our entertainment like oil

black gold, ghettoizing and demeaning our creations than stealing them

gentrifying our genius and then trying us on like costumes

before discarding our bodies like vines of strange fruit

…..just because we’re  magic doesn’t mean we’re not real